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What the hell is it with Chinese escalators? First that lady last summer chewed up, there have been another couple of incidents, and now an escalator repair man got "sucked into" the escalator he was repairing. This guy survived, at least initially, but apparently he's in bad shape. Apparently someone or something stopped the machinery before it killed him outright.

WTF is the problem here? Power-lock-out requires a cheap-ass padlock and some common sense.

Maybe substandard safety requirements or they are weakly enforced? A particular "get it done anyhow" attitude? Something cultural? Or just a wave of bad publications?

Might be the large number of people and escalators in China, with numbers those large, even relatively rare accidents are likely to happen.

Apparently, 10,000 people in the US were sent to the emergency room from escalator mishaps in 2005.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/danger-on-the-escalator/

One does have to wonder what percentage of that 10,000 are down to mechanical flaws with the escalator itself, though. They tend to be high and steep enough that just losing your balance because you're carrying too much shopping would be enough to do yourself some major injury.

You see, escalators combine the hazards of a stationary stairway with merciless mechanical stuff. They're more dangerous than I think people credit most of the time.

It's because we are so used to them. Combined with the fact that most have sides which are covered up so that you can't see whats happening inside and people just newer realize that they are standing on a giant merciless meat grinder.

In the US they normally have a maintenance timer, an actual clock that will shut down the machinery until reset by a service technition. They locate those with the motor under the moving stairs, so you have to partly take the thing apart to even think about resetting it. They need a lot of maintenance, mainly because so much dirt and crap from the floor and shoes gets into them.

This video looks like it could only be the result of incredibly bad working standards/conditions for the person, and not any flaw in the design, though that's no endorsement of it either. Working on the machine without turning it off is insane, but if nobody enforcing labor standards then employees inevitably will be forced into such unsafe actions. China has a lot of labor laws and regulations on paper, the government isn't completely moronic or even close too it, but enforcement is entirely lacking. Overall China is simply not a heavily policed and regulated state. Certainly opposition to the government itself is oppressed with great force, but that's in no small part precisely because the government doesn't control that much else.

As Brody from Mallrats would say: GET THAT FUCKING KID OFF THE ESCALATOR!!!

And he would be right.